What Are the Benefits of Eating Instant Oatmeal?

by Maia Appleby

Instant oatmeal is fortified with vitamins and minerals.

Instant oatmeal is conveniently packed and easy to prepare. You can buy flavored versions of it or add spices and fruit to suit your taste. Processing depletes instant oatmeal of nutrients, so manufacturers typically replace the loss vitamins with fortification. Even with fortification, instant oatmeal has about half the fiber and protein as the slow-cooked variety.

Vitamins

Starting your day with a bowl of instant oatmeal boosts your intake of B-complex vitamins. Each cooked cup provides half of your recommended daily intake for vitamin B-6, thiamin, riboflavin and niacin, nutrients that help your body metabolize the carbohydrates, protein and fat in food. It also gives you half of your daily requirement of vitamin A, an antioxidant that benefits your vision and helps strengthen your immune system. It also contains 30 percent of the folate you need daily. Folate is a B-vitamin that helps prevent neural tube defects in unborn infants.

Selenium

The Institute of Medicine recommends that adults get 55 micrograms of selenium per day. Selenium is a mineral that may benefit your immune system, heart and thyroid, according to the National Institutes of Health. A cup of cooked instant oatmeal provides 12 micrograms of selenium, giving you one-fifth of the selenium you need each day. Selenium acts as an antioxidant, scavenging free radicals that damage cells, so an adequate intake may help prevent premature aging and chronic diseases.

Other Minerals

Instant oatmeal is also rich in calcium, magnesium and phosphorus, which are crucial for the health of your bones, nerve function and muscle development. A cup of instant oatmeal contains 20 to 30 percent of each of those minerals. It provides men with 13 percent of the zinc and more than 100 percent of the iron they need daily, and it gives women 18 percent of the zinc and 80 percent of the iron they need each day. Zinc is an antioxidant that may shorten the duration of colds and viral infections, while iron helps transport oxygen through your bloodstream.

Fiber and Protein

Adding instant oatmeal to your diet can help you increase your fiber intake and keep your LDL cholesterol low. A bowl of instant oatmeal, with 4 grams of fiber, has 1 gram fewer than bran flakes. However, regular cooked oatmeal has 8.2 grams of fiber per cooked cup. The Institute of Medicine recommends that women get at least 25 grams of fiber per day and that men get at least 38 grams. Although a cup of regular oatmeal has about 11 grams of protein, instant oatmeal is also a rich source of protein. Each bowl of instant oatmeal provides 5.5 grams of protein, a half-gram less than the amount of protein in a scrambled egg.

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About the Author

Maia Appleby is a NASM-certified personal trainer with more than 15 years of experience in the fitness industry. Her articles have been published in a wide variety of print magazines and online publications, including the "Gale Encyclopedia of Nursing and Allied Health," "New Moon Network" and Bodybuilding.com. She has also worked as a weight-loss counselor and Pilates instructor.

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